The war in Iraq has inspired numerous films in recent years that not many people have wanted to see.

Hard to say if "The Lucky Ones" will buck that trend, but this is easily the most crowd-pleasing, something hawks and doves can watch together without challenges to their respective positions on the war. Which is to say it's a bit of a frivolous exercise.

The film advances no particular ideological message and rather presents character studies of three likable soldiers -- played by Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Pena -- who are returning home for various reasons.

Robbins is Cheever, an older vet with an injured back who is done with the Army for good and is going home to his wife and son.

McAdams is Colee, a naive soldier with a wounded leg who plans to use her injured leave to return a valuable guitar to the family of Randy, her dead Army lover.

Pena is T.K., who has been rendered impotent by a wound to the groin (probably a nod to Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises") and is headed to Las Vegas in search of a highly skilled prostitute to, er, help with his problem.

Wouldn't you know their plans are derailed early on, and the film becomes "Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Army Vet Edition." An airport power outage finds the trio splitting a rental car -- hey, three wackily mismatched soldiers on a cross-country road trip of self-discovery! Hilarity ensues!

Well, sometimes.

Director and co-screenwriter Neil Burger, a relative newcomer who helmed 2006's more interesting "The Illusionist," seems unsure what type of film he's making and, instead of striking a balance between comedy and pathos, allows the tone to shift wildly from scene to scene.

When Cheever makes it home, his wife promptly informs him she wants a divorce. Harsh. Oh, and his son needs $20,000 for college.

2.5 OUT OF 4 STARS

Rated: R for language, some sexual content

Director: Neil Burger

Cast: Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams, Michael Pena

Run time: 113 minutes

The two younger soldiers decide to stick with Cheever as he roams the country searching for peace of mind and quick money. Oh, it just so happens Colee's guitar is worth, yep, about $20,000. Funny how things work like that.

Meanwhile, introducing perhaps the most obscure sexual fetish ever referenced in a mainstream movie, TK solves his impotence problem while hiding with Colee in a ditch to escape an inexcusably stupid-looking tornado.

Anyway, the trio bumbles its way through a series of encounters and misadventures of varying degrees of probability -- they get into a bar fight, they visit a suburban church, they get invited to a party with zany results, one of them ends up in jail. Do you have to ask whether important life lessons are learned?

It's mostly harmless, breezily entertaining and trivial. It manages to avoid addressing with any seriousness the elements of fatalism touched upon almost inadvertently in the third act. To its credit, the film is skillful at presenting the occasionally awkward disconnect between the soldiers who fight and the citizens back home. Also, its road-trip vision of America -- more populated by expanses of franchise retail than postcard landmarks -- is refreshingly unromantic.

Still, it's hard to avoid the feeling that deeply serious subject matter is being handled with kid gloves, but when the alternative is heavy-handed Iraq warfare such as "Stop-Loss" and "In the Valley of Elah," maybe it's not so bad to have a little popcorn with your shrapnel once in a while.